Using the 2010 Mac Mini as a Home Theatre PC

It is about 2 months now since we purchased a 2010 Mac Mini to use as a home theatre PC. This is our first experience with Mac since the late 1980's, so a bit of a learning curve to adapt from the Windows World.

System Hardware:

• Mac Mini 2010 Model
• Sony 40" LCD TV (connected via HDMI)
• Logitech Mediaboard Pro Bluetooth wireless keyboard/trackpad
• Logitech Harmony 525 Programmable remote control (carry over from previous TV, etc)
• Apple Remote (only used for programming Logitech remote)
• Elagato Eye TV Diversity USB dual-HD Tuner
• Seagate 2TB Expansion Desktop Hard Drive
• existing ADSL2 Internet access with Airport Extreme Wi-Fi
• No fancy sound system - the TV speakers are quite good and we aren't into loud action movies.

Software (in addition to standard Mac applications):

• Elgato  EYE TV - for HD recording, playback, editing & exporting, also plays mp4 and m4v files
• VLC media player - for DVD's, and exported/ripped video files
• Handbrake - for ripping DVDs
• Tuxera NTFS driver - for external hard drive
• Disk Rotate - limits speed of Mac optical drive to control drive noise
• iRed Lite* - expands functionality of Apple Remote to control various applications
• Google Chrome - our favourite web browser - used for online video and general browsing

We built up the system in stages, adding the EYE TV tuner sometime later, which soon necessitated the 2TB expansion drive.

* Please note that iRed Lite is no longer under active development but is still available for download from tin:b Software aka filewell. The current iRed2 product, which is more sophisticated in many ways, also works with the Apple Remote but does currently not have the ability to switch between different "layers" for different applications.

Some issues and solutions/workarounds so far:

1. Apple DVD Player application freezes or crashes at the slightest scratch on a DVD - using VLC or Quicktime player instead or copy data from DVD prior to playing with VLC or QT.
2. When using VLC and some other applications, the Mac optical drive spins very fast and is intolerably noisy - recently discovered Disk Rotate utility which limits drive speed to suitable, quiet level.
3. Wi-Fi network access was a bit unreliable for playing back video from remote Windows PC, and for transferring files to and from remote windows PC - switched to wired network access over existing Cat5 cabling.
4. Seagate drive was formatted as Windows NTFS - Installed trial and subsequently purchased Tuxera NTFS driver for Mac - works fine. This means that drive can also be used on Windows PC's if needed.
5. Limited functionality (6 buttons) on Apple Remote, especially when used with VLC - discovered iRed Lite utility and, with some devious programming, even got Fast Forward and Rewind functions working with VLC (rather then Next/Previous). Learnt some elementary AppleScript in the process.

With all of the above, the system is working pretty well now, but I am sure we will find further tweaks from time to time.